DavidW

That teaching aid has a really strong case. Where I work (but not whom I work for) had a much better solution than asking for passwords-- you talk to current students only through the school's fb account. Will that will be set up like next year, and I'll be at my new job by then. Don't know what their policy is.

And House rejects legislation that would protect your right to not provide it:

Oh well. Really, should the FCC be involved in setting any rules as it pertains to human resource and security decisions for government agencies of any kind, let alone private firms? I'm kind of fuzzy on how the Constitution or any of the Amendments has much, if anything, to do with this type of issue, too.

I'm all for maintaining password privacy - and I enjoy the irony of reading about companies and other entities that no doubt have well documented privacy policies that cover passwords and when and to whom they should be given (ie, never and no one) - but I very seriously doubt the Federales need to be involved. The course being pursued in Maryland seems about right to me.

I have a facebook account because my student peers communicate through it and I'd miss vital information if I didn't have one, but I never look at it - I have nothing worth broadcasting to my friends, and the things they post are invariably mundane. I also hate that people add people they barely know, or don't know at all. I have around 30 or 40 friends there, all of whom I speak to in real life. I can't understand why someone would have 200+.

I do, however, have an active Google+ account, and I think it's brilliant. A lot of people seem not to like Google+ because they just don't get it - it is not like facebook. I'm active there, but I have no real life friends on it. Basically, the way I use it is to discuss things I find interesting with professionals involved in it - it's kind of like a forum like GMG in that sense. For example, I use Google reader to keep up with news/science/books etc., and Google+ is where I go to have proper conversations about that stuff. A lot of the time, you're even having conversations with the writers and scientists who wrote the article in question. It's a great way of networking with interesting people you've never met before.

Not everyone is 'social'. Some of us are very private people. A few weeks ago some German sociologists and psychologists came up with the idea that there 'is something wrong with you' if you're not part of a Social Media group. On the contrary, there is 'something wrong' with them for suggesting such a silly thing.Before Google came, we had the internet...it was free and easy, you could go anywhere and look for anything. Now we have become near dependant on Google, Yahoo, etc, because they have muscled up to become the standard internet portals. They store information, and in Social Media, disseminate it...for money. The whole thing is unhuman and very sick. I haven't posted in Facebook for an awful long time now. I signed for Twitter a couple of weeks ago. More shite. I'd rather keep a long-hand diary...It is becoming more necessary than a CV to have a PUBLIC profile on a social media portal. In many ways, our dependence on electricity and electronics is going to end in tears. All it takes is a solar storm to knock everything on Earth out. Everything. It is not something that 'might' happen, it is something that 'will' happen. Such events are not uncommon. In space time they happen all the time. In Earth time there are long decades between 'serious' storms...it may happen tomorrow, it may happen in 100 years. It WILL happen. We are building houses on water. Unfortunately, we cannot get a celestial event to knock social media out ONLY. Right. I'm off to the Scottish Highlands now to rave with the locusts, John the Baptist style, that the World is going to end...sometime. I will baptise allcomers in Loch Ness, and wear the skins of a mountain Stag.

Logged

Dear Hans RottIn the 1980s there was a creative punk group called "Big Audio Dynamite". I have decided to apply the term to you, my man. And I still haven't properly finished your Screenplay yet. Too bad. Take care anyway old chum, I'm off to listen to Brahms!Kind regards, John

I'm reading Turing's Cathedral by George Dyson. His thesis is that for 60 years the digital universe has been training humans how to communicate with it. The genetic code gave birth to the digital code which in turn decrypted the genetic code to learn how to replicate itself. It (some kind of "it") is learning and evolving orders of magnitude faster than we bacteria-based entities have done.

It may seem significant that our code in human manifestation thinks it's conscious whereas the digital code is under no such impression for the time being. That will change at some point. The question arises if "it/they" would have any reason to communicate at the natural language concept level. Maybe there's nothing to say in that medium.

Recently the code told us to build drones to help fight our wars. Before that a science fiction writer figured out what the drones will do when they grow up. That writer was Philip K. Dick.